Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Commissioner DaBaron and Council Member Won discuss the failure of 'Fair Share' in shelter siting
1:12:29
·
4 min
Commissioner Shams DaBaron questions Council Member Julie Won about how "Fair Share" is currently determined for shelter placement. Won asserts there is no real Fair Share mechanism in practice; instead, emergency hotel contracts have led to a concentration of shelters in low-income, Black and Latino districts like hers. She argues for a mandated equal distribution across all 51 council districts, potentially adjusted for population, rather than the current ad-hoc, politically expedient approach.
- Current shelter siting relies heavily on available hotels, often in lower-income areas, rather than a systematic Fair Share assessment.
- This results in disproportionate burdens on certain communities.
- Won advocates for a charter revision mandating equal distribution of shelters across all council districts.
- Briefly mentions the potential for housing in underutilized Industrial Business Zones (IBZs).
Richard R. Buery Jr.
1:12:29
Good
Shams DaBaron
1:12:31
good to see you, and thank you for your testimony.
1:12:35
So I wanted to ask
Richard R. Buery Jr.
1:12:37
you, I'm not
Shams DaBaron
1:12:38
clear on this, but, about this year.
1:12:42
Yeah.
1:12:43
I was told that there's a way that this is determined throughout
Richard R. Buery Jr.
1:12:49
the city, and and and if I'm hearing it correct, the way it's determined is not a good way.
Shane Moynihan
1:12:57
And and if you
Richard R. Buery Jr.
1:12:58
can give some clarity on how fair share is determined and what we can do as a charter to kinda center it in a better way.
Julie Won
1:13:06
I think if you look at the maps now, because your post has done a great favor to the whole entire city by publishing where all the migrant shelters are that are run by DHS as well as the parks.
1:13:16
The top three shelter locations are my district, not where the wealthy people live, but nice to Queensbridge houses, Ravenswood houses, and Woodside houses where the poorest smallest population of black people live in my district.
1:13:29
That is not okay.
1:13:31
But that's what they've done because the next up is council member Feliz, a very low income Latino black district.
1:13:37
Next up, Rafael Salamanca.
1:13:39
Again, another very poor black and Latino district.
1:13:42
Next up, speaker Adams.
1:13:45
Selvina Brooks Bowers, Natasha Williams, again, low income black and brown districts.
1:13:51
This has been done historically amongst multiple mayors and generations of New York City history because it has been easier for them politically to get away with putting shelters in poor black and brown districts than putting them in wealthy white districts while they will with pride, body, murder and say that you can't have these shelters here.
Shams DaBaron
1:14:09
What what is the mechanism that city used to determine this is what fair share is?
1:14:16
They didn't
Julie Won
1:14:16
do fair share.
1:14:17
They only did it as an emergency response saying, we're gonna create hotel shelters.
1:14:22
The fastest way we're gonna get hotel shelters are finding hotels that are boutique, that are not labored, who can't survive during COVID, and we will make them into shelters temporarily.
1:14:31
And both parties get to benefit because they get a profit, and we get a shelter out of it temporarily.
1:14:36
But DHS has said clearly over and over again that hotel shelters are not what they want nor is it sustainable for the residents or the agency themselves or the city.
1:14:46
They that is not preferred.
1:14:48
So I recommend that if we have 51 council districts, that we have equal distribution if and it's gonna differ by population.
1:14:55
So if we have for example, at one point, we have more than 50,000 people in the shelter, 50,000 people divided by 51 districts, and we have to figure out a way how to get them evenly distributed as much as possible in all 51 districts and not 51 districts and only the black and brown poor parts of people's districts, but in all parts of everyone's district.
Shams DaBaron
1:15:14
One last thing.
1:15:15
I'm sorry.
1:15:17
So if I'm correct, and somebody correct me if I'm wrong, when they site in a shelter in a district, they're going according to a population count of a need?
Diane Savino
1:15:30
No.
1:15:31
No?
1:15:31
What is that?
Shams DaBaron
1:15:32
How do they determine that?
Julie Won
1:15:33
They just have a list from the hotel.
1:15:36
I forget what the actual list is, but I have the list where they know the vacancies of hotels and hotels that are willing to go into a city contract because they're saying, I would make more money as a shelter than I would waiting for clients to come because my hotel is overridden in a terrible place in the middle of an IVZ, and nobody really comes here anyway.
1:15:56
And I actually only opened it to become a shelter primarily.
1:16:00
So that's what it's for, which actually reminds me.
1:16:02
Right now, the city is going through a study of all of the IVZs, and not all IVZs are the same.
1:16:08
If you look at an IVZ like mines in my district in Milan City, Dutch kills, those shall those IVZs are empty.
1:16:15
They are barren.
1:16:16
They're vandalized, and they have no business going on.
1:16:19
There's no manufacturing.
1:16:20
We have to allow them to build housing, but the current payroll policy does not.
1:16:25
And then we have had multiple meetings now where the landowners as well as residents have said, we don't wanna walk there.
1:16:31
We don't wanna be there.
1:16:32
We don't wanna do business there because all there is is violence and dirt there, but we would love the opportunity to build housing there.
1:16:40
But we're being denied.
1:16:41
So we really implore you to consider that in an area like mine where there is high density and people clamoring, we have less than point 4% vacancy rate.
1:16:52
That's how popular this neighborhood is to live here if we are not allowing them to build housing so that we can we can try to accommodate everybody.